A crane rises in the backyard of a home in the Ken Carla neighborhood. For five weeks, MSD bored a 1,134-foot tunnel under Harrods Creek and U.S. 42 for a pipeline in eastern Jefferson County.

Prospect Treatment Plant eliminations project timeline

2010: MSD begins meeting with area residents about the project, which includes construction of a regional Harrods Creek Pump Station next to Ken Carla subdivision on U.S. 42. Fall 2012: Work is underway on River Road interceptor project, a pipeline installation on the west side of U.S. 42 that’s part of the plant eliminations project. Spring 2013: Pipeline installation is underway on the east side of U.S. 42, heading toward the Hite Creek Water Quality Treatment Center, and construction begins at pump station site, including boring a tunnel under Harrods Creek and U.S. 42. Mid to late 2015: Pipeline installation and pump station are to be completed, and five treatment plants in Prospect are to be decommissioned.

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It’s a crucial part of the Metropolitan Sewer District’s $850 million plan to meet the requirements of a federal court agreement to reduce the amount of sewage going into area waterways. But the scope and impact of work on the new sewer pipeline and regional pumping station in eastern Jefferson County have its neighbors on edge.

“We hate it,” said Harvey Langford, president of the Ken Carla neighborhood’s homeowners association. “We didn’t know how much construction, equipment and noise this thing was going to involve. There’s a tremendous amount of activity. We are overwhelmed.”

Day and night for more than five weeks, noise and vibrations from machines boring a 1,134-foot tunnel under Harrods Creek and U.S. 42 rattled the homes and nerves of residents of the 23-home subdivision on the edge of Prospect.

Estella Hargrove says that her once tranquil backyard that slopes down to the creek is dwarfed by a complex of towering platforms, gravel roads, trailers, cranes and other pieces of heavy equipment teeming with workers — as the clock ticks on a project with a 2015 federal deadline.

Although the boring recently ended, workers are preparing to install pipelines in the tunnel, which is nearly 8 feet in diameter, and they’re building the adjacent sewage pumping plant, which is the heart of a $43 million MSD project to improve water quality in Harrods Creek.

The Ken Carla plant will pump sewage now being handled by five leaky plants in Prospect through a new 6.7-mile pipeline to the Hite Creek treatment plant east of Norton Commons. It will serve only the roughly 5,000 people in the Prospect area.

Early plans showed the pipeline running along the Snyder Freeway, but MSD chief engineer Steve Emly said constraints caused by the eastern Ohio River bridge project, as well as conflicts with a 60-inch Louisville Water Co. main, eliminated that route.

In addition to the complaints from Ken Carla residents — who met and negotiated construction issues with MSD beforehand — residents of other communities farther east along the route in Norton Commons and the Wolf Pen Preservation Area are unhappy that their properties also will be dug up for a sewer line that will not directly serve them.

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Norton Commons already has its own line going to the Hite Creek plant, while others are on large lots with septic systems.

Barbara Kelly, with the Wolf Pen Preservation Association, said work on three major infrastructure projects in the area by MSD, the Louisville Water Co. and the contractors building the eastern Ohio River bridge should have been better coordinated.

Hundreds of trees could have been saved if the route along the Snyder had been taken, she said.

At least a half dozen other routes also were discussed, but MSD is moving ahead with the current one while it is still negotiating its final path through Norton Commons and across at least a couple of properties on Mint Springs Branch Road. Both sides say they are close to an agreement.

“We would just as soon not have it running across us,” said David Tomes, with Norton Commons Realty. “Tentatively, we’ve agreed on a route that we think is least objectionable to us. It goes across some finished landscaped areas but not across any residential lots. It’s always disruptive to come in and dig up a finished area.”

The pipeline also will cross a small part of the Glen Oaks subdivision’s golf course, before going under Interstate 71 to the Hite Creek plant.

The Hite Creek plant — built primarily to serve the Kentucky Truck Plant — can handle 6 million gallons of flow per day, and the extra flow from the Prospect project will “consume a big chunk of the remaining capacity,” Emly said. But there are already plans to expand the plant to accommodate growth in the area, he said.

Treated effluent from the plant goes into Hite Creek, a tributary of Harrods Creek.

Gordon Garner, former head of MSD and now chairman of the Kentucky Waterway Alliance environmental advocacy group, said the Hite Creek plant offers a “very high level of treatment” that will result in a “clear net benefit” to Harrods Creek.

He said restrictions prevent a sewage treatment plant from being built within five miles of the Louisville Water Co.’s water intake site at Zorn Avenue, which is why the Hite Creek plant is not on the Ohio River.

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And that’s why the Prospect sewage is being pumped upstream from near the Ohio River at Ken Carla.

Hargrove, one the Ken Carla residents most affected by the construction work, described the boring of the tunnel as “the worst part.”

“As you can imagine, it makes a whole lot of noise,” said Clarence Matthews, who lives near Hargrove and cares for his invalid wife at home.

MSD officials have assured Ken Carla residents that their neighborhood will be restored, that the area around the pump station will be heavily landscaped and that a retaining wall will be installed along the driveway to the new sewage pumping plant that extends from Ken Carla Drive — one of only two streets in the subdivision.

The plant also will be equipped with state of the art odor control, Emly said.

The construction will continue for one to two more years, though most of the work that is disrupting residents will end within a year, Emly said, adding that the goal is to have the system operational by the second or third quarter of 2015.

Ken Carla residents had asked if another site could be chosen for the pumping plant, but their neighborhood was chosen because it is out of the flood plain, and Ken Carla Drive offers short, direct access above the 100-year flood plain, Emly said.

MSD paid the Ken Carla association $9,000 for an easement on less than an acre for the project in the subdivision’s common area near the creek, but it did not buy any property.

Though many residents opposed the deal, they didn’t have the money to mount a legal challenge and were told in discussions with MSD that the project could proceed regardless, under the provisions of eminent domain, said Langford, the association president.

“It’s just a losing battle,” he said.

The Prospect treatment plants to be eliminated were built by private developers as temporary facilities and later acquired by MSD. They are Hunting Creek North (built in 1964, acquired in 1999), Hunting Creek South (built in 1968, acquired in 1999), Timberlake (built in 1973, acquired in 1999), Ken Carla (built in 1968, acquired in 1973) and Shadow Wood (built in 1979, acquired in 2008).